It pains me to concede today that the evidence is indeed overwhelming that Lance fueled his way to cycling glory on a cocktail of PEDs that make those he took to treat his cancer seem like mere aspirin…
The real tragedy here is not Lance falling from grace, but the disillusionment this is bound to cause among the millions of cancer survivors who derived life-sustaining inspiration from his ‘LIVESTRONG’ life story. That his life story is turning out to be a phenomenal fraud is devastating enough for me. I can only imagine the impact it’s having, and will have, on them.
(“Lance Armstrong: falling from grace,” The iPINIONS Journal, May 24, 2011)
More to the point:
The evidence against him is such that Lance Armstrong insisting he’s no doper is rather like O.J. Simpson insisting he’s no murderer. In any event, this development makes Armstrong easily the most notorious cheater in sports history. And I suppose calling it a ‘fall from grace’ mistakenly assumes he had grace in the first place….
(“Doper Lance Armstrong Stripped,” The iPINIONS Journal, August 24, 2012)
As these quotes indicate, I came to regard Armstrong long ago as little more than a pathological liar and a serial cheat. But even I did not appreciate the extent to which he enlisted and ensnared others in his web of lies to further his ill-gotten gains.
USADA released the findings of a two-year investigation yesterday accusing Armstrong of using a cocktail of banned substances and blood transfusions. They built up a picture of an elaborate doping ring which alleged the involvement of support staff, fellow riders and even his former wife. The doping programme was the brainchild of disgraced Italian doctor, Michele Ferrari, and Armstrong would travel across Europe during and before races to have blood transfusions.
The report also accused Armstrong of administering testosterone to a teammate, threatening fellow riders with the sack if they did not follow Dr. Ferrari’s EPO programme and of surrounding himself with drug runners ‘so that he could achieve his goal of winning the Tour de France year after year.’ The report says there was a ‘code of silence’ in cycling as Armstrong intimidated whistle-blowers and the 200 pages of evidence referenced financial records, email traffic, and laboratory test results which the agency believes proved he was doping for years.
‘The USPS Team doping conspiracy was professionally designed to groom and pressure athletes to use dangerous drugs, to evade detection, to ensure its secrecy and ultimately gain an unfair competitive advantage through superior doping practices,’ the agency said. ‘A program organised by individuals who thought they were above the rules and who still play a major and active role in sport today.’
(The Telegraph, October 11, 2012)
Frankly, the USADA report reads like the criminal indictment of a Mafia Don. After all, it’s one thing for Armstrong to have been scoring performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) for his personal use; it’s quite another for him to have been recruiting and disciplining his teammates in a manner eerily similar to the way a mob boss recruits and disciplines his Capos.
Which puts a completely different light on the decision by federal prosecutors to give him a pass:
After a two-year investigation, prosecutors announced on Friday that they will not be filing any criminal charges against Lance…
But it was hardly a vindication of his innocence. After all, prosecutors offered no reason for closing the case, leaving the public to speculate in perpetuity about his guilt or innocence, and compelling me to offer the following take on their decision:
No matter the nature and amount of the evidence, prosecutors have wide discretion in deciding whether to file charges. In this case, I suspect that, like me, the lead prosecutor believes PEDs should be decriminalized. Moreover, he probably considered the fact that, as 60 Minutes duly revealed, virtually every cyclist who competed against Lance was using PEDs too. (In point of fact, the winner of the 2010 Tour de France, Alberto Contador, was just stripped of his title on Monday and banned for two years for doping.)
Then there’s last year’s sensational acquittal by a federal jury of baseball’s home-run king, Barry Bonds, on a battery of charges related to his use of PEDs. Not to mention the formidable goodwill Lance has amassed over the years from his heroic bout with testicular cancer and the hundreds of millions he has raised for cancer research through his LIVESTRONG foundation.
Taken together, I suspect these factors led prosecutors to conclude not only that Lance would probably be acquitted too, but that no public interest would be served by prosecuting (or arguably scapegoating) him for using PEDs. That’s my take.
Nevertheless, the all-important U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) is moving ahead with its separate investigation. Never mind that the only punishment this agency can impose at this point is to inflict further damage to Lance’s already tattered reputation. Yet that is precisely what USADA seems determined to do.
(“Feds Give Lance Reprieve on Doping,” The iPINIONS Journal, February 8, 2012)
I now believe that no amount of good Armstrong has done through his LIVESTRONG foundation is sufficient mitigation to spare him from criminal prosecution. For, far from being a scapegoat, he was the boss of what USADA described as “the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen.”
What’s more, it speaks volumes about his guilt that he chose not to even contest the USADA findings. No doubt he did this because, after spending the past few years insisting that his only accusers are one disgruntled former teammate and jealous people like former Tour champion Greg Lemond, USADA was prepared to confront him with 26 unimpeachable accusers, including 11 former teammates and his personal aide.
In fact, he can still be, and should be, prosecuted (a la Roger Clemens – not for being a fiendish abuser of PEDs, but for perjuring himself to federal authorities about being one). And no matter the prospect of jury nullification, justice demands it.
I appreciate of course that there are many who believe not only that no prosecution is warranted, but that Armstrong’s reputation remains undiminished. I submit, however, that such people are no different from the poor-misguided fools who would still hail Bernie Madoff as a financial genius and would still give him their money to “invest.”
But, as Dina Lohan might say: Lance, you’re dead to me!
Related commentaries:
Armstrong stripped…